City Weekly Cover Story

Does anyone in this 4-part photograph look familiar? No? Look carefully at the handsome face in the upper lefthand corner. Do you recognize him? It's Greg! Yes our own Greg Wilcox made the cover of City Weekly (CW), the local liberal rag in SLC. Now the question is, how did he make the cover of CW? Well, he was an intern at CW this summer (they told him he was the best intern they have ever had). I guess the art director needed a good looking face for the cover, and he was in. He also wrote an article for the paper; check it out.

Day's of 47 Youth Parade

As it got close to the 24th of July (Utah State holiday), JoAnn had the great idea of taking PJ to the Youth Parade. I was actually OK with it because it happened to start on the street in front of the building where I work (I knew I could get a good parking spot). I also knew that it wouldn't be as long and tedious as the main Day's of 47 Parade which I hated as a child. One thing that didn't change, it was hot!

After the parade, there was a big carnival at Washington Square where all the climbing and jumping things were free. I heard later that it was for the parade participants, but I didn't know that when we took PJ over. You may remember I lamented the fact that PJ didn't get to get in one of the "jumping things" at Bluffdale Town Days. He was so excited to get in the jumping thing at the post parade carnival.

There were also big inflatable slides where you had to climb up the back of the slide using foot holes and hand holds to grab on. PJ amazed me by climbing up one slide that was about 15 feet tall and had flimsy hand holds at best. He is definitely a climber.

As I mentioned above, it was a hot day. When we got in the car to come home, the outside temperature gauge read 104 degrees. When we got home, JoAnn filled a trough with water for the dogs but PJ wanted wanted to get in first.

Moral Set Point?

When I read this article, it rang true. Probably because I see so may supposedly good LDS members in the Utah State Legislature who are so unethical.

Do We Have a Moral Set Point?

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 09:11 PM PDT

A few years ago, psychologist Nancy Etcoff wrote a piece for Science & Spirit magazine in which she explained that "while feelings of happiness change from day to day, depending on the circumstances, people seem to have a stable midpoint to these variations, a general level of happiness to which they return after momentary irritation or elation fades. Scientists call this the 'hedonic set point' or happiness thermostat."
So I was interested to read about a recent study from a group of researchers at Northwestern University who suggest we have a set point for morality as well. They ran a bunch of experiments to see how our sense of moral self-worth affects our behavior.
According to the scientists, people who behave immorally in one aspect of their lives tend to "cleanse" themselves by performing good deeds in other areas. But their model goes further, as a write-up of the research reports:

Other studies have shown the moral-cleansing effect, but this new Northwestern model shows that the cleansing also has to do with restoring an ideal level of moral self-worth. In other words, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.

If they're right, the opposite of the cleansing effect would also hold true: Performing a series of good deeds would raise our moral self-worth, thus leading us to do some not-so-good stuff to balance things out. That's just what psychology graduate student Sonya Sachdeva, who worked on the study, suggests. "Imagine a line on a plane," she says. "The only way you can come back down is either by refraining from good social behavior or by actively engaging in immoral behavior."